Cathedral - Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) (1996)

A bit of a random curiosity today, but this old Cathedral EP from '96 was something I came across at a second hand shop a few years ago for like $4 and the collector in me couldn't resist. Fortunately its quite good too and an interesting listen for Cathedral fanatics.

The EP kicks off with the title track, which originally appeared on, 'The Carnival Bizarre,' although this version features a 20 second intro, which I can only assume to be a TV advert for the 1968 film, 'Witchfinder General.' Besides that the track remains exactly the same as its album counterpart; groovy as fuck, absolutely rockin', addictive and quite simply one of the best stoner doom metal songs ever wrote.

The second song and one of the biggest treats of this EP is the cover version of Arthur Brown's late 60's psychedelic rock hit, 'Fire.' Cathedral's jam of this one is fairly close to the original although it seems to have more life to it, additional lyrics, its a bit more metal as well Lee Dorian shows so much heart with his singing, while, 'Copper Sunset' is a short doomy instrumental, which as no surprise really just has this hazy sort of end of the day sunset feeling to it, like smoking joints on the beach as the sunset goes down (or something). 'Purple Wonderland' and 'The Devils Summit' are a bit different with very little doom on display, but rather they sound much more like vintage 60's psychedelic rock with lots of odd synthesizers, Hammond organ and saxophones (Sexaphones in the booklet!) at work. I should probably listen to these songs while drinking some day, because I'm fairly sure I'd enjoy Purple a bit more with a buzz going, whereas on the other hand Devils Summit is just too good to resist and is has just the right amount of groove and weirdness to make it a fantastic song.

As a whole this is an interesting EP since its like a Cathedral time warp, though I suppose its not the sort of item your going to randomly stumble upon so easy as I did. Definitely worth it for the long time Cathedral fans since you get to see the guys doing something a bit different.

Interestingly there is two other versions of this EP; A Japanese press, which has a Curved Air cover as well a promo version exists, which has two Black Sabbath covers tacked at the end (WTF, I want!). Oh, and apparently some DVD's of, 'Witchfinder General' have Cathedral's music video for Hopkins included... but not mine. Life is so unfair.